Reaching the Summit
It's been a couple of months since AWS London Summit At Excel in London Docklands. It is the largest* of the European AWS summits and grows every year.
I wrote most of this just after the summit, but it got a bit lost in my drafts so I have only just found it. It may not be as useful as at the time, but I still thought I would update and publish it. By coincidence, I have just received an email from AWS saying all the summit videos are available online.
*NOTE: I have been told by a contact at AWS the London Summit is the largest but have not confirmed officially.
Did someone mention GenAI?
No surprise to anyone who is an AWS watcher, there was a lot of talk about GenAI. It is great so see so much going on in this very exciting and fast moving field.
There is a slight problem with GenAI at AWS though - AWS has so much to offer. AWS for years has billed itself as the cloud provider with the greatest breadth of services. It gives you choice and the correct tools for whatever business problem you are trying to solve. GenAI is obviously the current hot topic for both investors and many clients. There is a GenAI arms race going on with all the cloud providers, social media companies, chip providers and other major players in the tech sector. There are however a lot of professional AWS users and companies who want to hear about all the other AWS services. I think AWS does have a difficult balancing act. I do want to hear more about GenAI and it is great to see the excitement it is generating, but I also want to see more of all the other AWS content. Overall I think the content maybe slightly to GenAI heavy but the balance is just about right. But that's my personal taste. I know others would disagree.
Another problem with GenAI that is industry wide is readiness. Most of the companies I speak to about any AI (not just GenAI) have the same problems. There is so much to do with data fundamentals. There are quit a few AWS product in this space, but many companies need to think about their data strategy and sort out the fundamentals before they will be ready for AI.
If you leave aside my wish to have everything, it is great to hear about some of the things people are doing with GenAI. Since the summit Bedrock has gone live in the UK
Sustainability
There was a large area in the Expo hall dedicated to sustainability. It was good to see the ongoing Amazon commitment to sustainability and also talk to some of the staff from London's Natural History Museum about their new sustainability project. I also had an interesting conversation with one of the museum staff about how they are using AI and data to improve their catalog of artefacts.
As a member of the Natural History Museum in London and a keen AWS user I will be very interested to see how this work develops.
Sessions
The sessions were held in about 8 main theatres and a couple of smaller stages in the Expo area. There were also some workshops. I think they were held in one of the smaller upstair rooms.
Unfortunately the workshops are easy to miss in such a busy event - you have to look for them in the app or you will miss them.
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From what I could see most of the sessions were very well attended. I attended a couple and was very happy with the quality and content
Migration and DevOps
The keynote was very GenAI focussed but DevOps and more general AWS topics were available in the sessions. I went to a couple of very interesting sessions on DevOps.
There was also the usual range of AWS experts in the makers village that were available for specific advice.
Expo
The Expo is the heart of the AWS summit. There are stalls from loads of AWS partners. The parter ecosystem is very varied and has consulting partners through to product companies offering a whole range of services.
The Expo also contained the sustainability area, smaller stages food and drink, and many other highlights. Here are a few:
Round up
There continues to be a real buzz around GenAI. While I want to see this continue, I do think it is becoming a bit overwhelming. Last years Re:Invent was a little to GenAI heavy. It is hard to strike a balance between the cool new kid on the block (GenAI) and all the other features AWS has to offer. I would like AWS to dial down the wall-to-wall GenAI coverage a bit (but not a lot).
Overall the summit was a good event and there was some really good content. It was also good opportunity to catch up with clients, former colleagues and contacts at AWS.
Missed the summit?
Obviously the networking and expo and elements are gone, but all the content is available for the London summit (and other EMEA summits also) in the Summits on-demand hub. Like the summits it's free but you need to register. Here is the link: